The Tory party is famed for its secret dining societies. They legendarily meet in fine clubs and are packed with influential members toasting themselves as yet another one of their bright ideas becomes official party policy. The most important supper club today, however, has a very different membership, and it’s tikka masala they tuck in to, not haute cuisine.

This curry club was founded in 2010 by a collection of newly elected MPs. They only admitted those who refused to brown-nose the leadership for a promotion. Other casual rebels soon joined. They tend to be independently minded politicians, rather than sour enemies of David Cameron. And they represent a strand of Conservative thinking often missing from the top of the party.

They are not alone. Another group of thoughtful young Tories have congregated around the all-party parliamentary group on boxing. They are enthusiastic and fizzing with ideas, and often have backgrounds quite different from the party leadership’s. They speak the language of the “blue-collar Conservative” – that elusive creature whose vote is the subject of endless op-eds and working groups.

But they are more self-effacing than self-promoting. Among their number are Tracey Crouch, Steve Barclay, Charlotte Leslie and Philip Lee. Their curry-loving companions include Simon Hart, Alun Cairns, Gavin Williamson and Andrew Percy. They’re often spotted swapping jokes and ideas in Portcullis House with other like-minded Tories such as Justin Tomlinson and Guto Bebb.

Curry club myths abound: some members like to joke that there is an initiation ceremony, while others dismiss the soiree as “just a bunch of like-minded MPs having a beer and a curry”. But secret handshake or not, these MPs have got more to offer the party than it is taking from them.

Over coffee, many of these new members will pour out exciting policy proposals and messaging that the Conservative Party could benefit from, but will then add that they wish they had the opportunity to offer and implement this advice. One MP, observing these colleagues, warns that “the whips need to work out how they can use them as much as possible. If they made a better job of this, there wouldn’t be so much of an opportunity for idle minds to wreak havoc.”

The Curry Club Conservatives might not be serial rebels but they do have rebellious tendencies. If the party were to harness their intellectual power, it might avoid so many of the embarrassing revolts it has experienced recently.

Most usefully, these MPs could offer early warning on policies that those at the top of the party consider to be brilliant but which would irritate a blue-collar Tory no end. “If only they had asked Tracey Crouch or Andrew Percy” is a common complaint on the backbenches when a policy goes wrong or is badly pitched. As another MP recently told me: “I see new policies appear in a newspaper and wonder whether they are really coming from fellow Conservatives.”

Much of the embarrassment of last year’s Budget could have been averted had the Curry Club Conservatives been given the opportunity to point out that their naturally Right-wing, working-class constituents would be horrified by taxes on pasties and caravans. These MPs think as much about how a policy will play in their constituencies as whether it will look nice with a graph in a pamphlet. And some of the party’s biggest disasters have been spawned by too much of the second type of thinking and too little of the first. As one member of the boxing group puts it, they are “muscular pragmatists” rather than the kind of people who inhabit “think tanks and ivory towers”.

Fortunately, there are signs that the leadership is starting to twig that this bunch of backbenchers might be on to something. Lynton Crosby and the party’s co-chairman, Lord Feldman, are due to meet those with a track record of campaigning.

And the newly formed No 10 policy board, led by Jo Johnson, has started to ask them for ideas for the 2015 manifesto – though it is a shame that Crouch was not invited onto the board. The party’s campaign machine could also make far greater use of them on the airwaves. One MP recently confided that he only heard from his whip when he was in trouble. “But on so many other issues, I would be more than happy to take one for the team,” he says. “It’s just that no one asks.”

The Tories talk and write endlessly about returning to a “blue-collar Conservatism”. But if they really want to do something about it, then there’s a ready-made group of MPs waiting to help them find those voters in time for 2015. In the next few months, Jo Johnson and his team should look for as many opportunities for a curry and a punch-up as possible.